III. The Mythological
Landscapes [cont.]

Tradition and Character
The Polyphemus painting is a masterpiece of its kind, certainly no less, perhaps even more so than the bucolic landscapes are of theirs. As we saw, the bucolic landscapes represent a significant achievement by blending long-established pictorial motives into a novel composition. What is the tradition behind the two mythological landscapes? There are but four mythological landscapes preserved that are known to precede our panels. Two are friezes, the Odyssey Frieze and the frieze in the Aula Isiaca; two are panels, the Polyphemus picture in the Casa di Livia and one of the small green monochromes in Naples [no. 94'13, pl. 49, 2], mentioned above.

In the two friezes the representation of a landscape setting, of depth, of persons and objects in the setting is completely different, and so are the perspective and the palette.[17] Both friezes testify to the existence of a form of landscape painting that in each and every respect is the opposite of the form of the Boscotrecase paintings--there is no stylistic link between them [see above p. 31. 41f. n. 56].

The green monochrome[18] is a strange mixture of a sacro-idyllic and a mythological landscape [pl. 49, 2]. Its pendant is, as we have seen above, an example of the former species [pl. 49, 1]. Both are but variations of the same highly formalized composition with two scenes one above the other, axially placed architecture with symmetrically arranged figures. Artemis and Actaeon are merely staffage. Still we have to note the green monochrome background, the axiality of the setting, and the surrounding water, the shore line being indicated by the drinking stag .

The Polyphemus panel in the Casa di Livia[19], by now barely recognizable but [p. 47] preserved in drawings, is a unique composition. There is nothing quite like it among ancient paintings[20]. Whatever the explanation, the first glance reveals the impossibility of connecting it with the Boscotrecase panel in any way. The sole aspect in common is the identity of the protagonists, but no two representations of Polyphemus and Galatea could be more different. Still we note that at least one representation of this theme in a landscape setting preceded the Boscotrecase painting.

To find more immediate inspirations of the Boscotrecase panels we have to turn to other paintings. The Polyphemus panel shares significant structural details with the bucolic landscape on he north wall of the Red Room [pl. 32]: the tall, slender column, axially placed with the tree behind it, the rocky island, the flock, the short column with a statue on it, the bridge or bridge-like rock in the right foreground. Polyphemus himself is not unlike the statue of the goddess in the landscape. The combination of figure, column, and tree is the same in both pictures. One landscape is grander, the other more charming, but both are built alike and each is suitably adapted to its purpose. The models which the bucolic landscape adapted and changed must have also been the models for the Polyphemus picture. Murals from the Farnesina [pl. 48, 3] prove to have been the closest, as they were also the latest, among the predecessors, but panels from the "House of Augustus" and the Casa di Livia are also comparable. The Casa di Livia seems a significant source for the Polyphemus panel in other aspects as well. The inspiration for the theme may have come from here. Another panel is important for the composition: the Io and Argus panel[21] [pl. 48, 2] is a mythological painting with a landscape background. Io sits on a rock before a pillar and a tree--the familiar arrangement is applied to a megalographic representation of a legend. The combination of this motive with the larger spaciousness of a Farnesina panel such as the one in the white cubiculum with the shepherd at the steps of a pedestal [see above, p. 27f. p l. 48, 3], and the addition of other elements of the sacro-idyllic scenes as well as the stereotyped motive of the nymph riding a sea-animal would account for almost all the parts in the Polyphemus panel. But it would in no way explain the final product. Its true essence, its real character, it particular beauty are new and surprising achievements. Like the bucolic landscapes the Polyphemus panel establishes a new form. The bucolic and the mythological landscapes have in common not only motives or formulae--they share essentials: the peculiar perspective, the relation between the foreground and background scenes, the unifying atmosphere. It is the latter that particularly reveals the painter's ingenuity. In the Black Room the vignettes float on the vast wall like brilliant jewels; in the Red Room the landscapes appear suspended in space; in the mythological paintings the landscape, the persons, and the objects emerge from the bluish green universe of sea and sky. These are but three different versions of the same approach to representing atmospheric landscape by ^visual suggestions rather than by pictorial statement. No longer merely backdrop for a [p. 47] narrative, no longer factual representation of potentially existing scenery, no longer decorative miniatures or friezes of interesting and pleasant details, these three sets of paintings lead us to discover in landscape something that had remained hidden before, something which only landscape and no other part of the world possesses: the intangible air in which and through which life exists. [p. 48]

Influence and Meaning
We have touched upon the far-reaching consequences for later paintings of the bucolic landscapes. The influence exercised by the mythological landscapes is even more direct.

There must have been a great many Polyphemus landscape panels on walls of the Third and Fourth Style--no fewer than sixteen examples are known.[22] Only very few are still preserved and most of these are very fragmentary. Four panels depend directly or indirectly upon the Boscotrecase picture:

1. Pompei I 7, 7 [Dawson 40, Schefold, WP, 31. Maiuri, Le pitture delle Case di 'M. Fabius Amandio' etc. [1938] 2, 9f. p l. 1, 1. Here pl. 55, 1].

2. Pompei VII 15, 2 [Dawson 26, Schefold, WP. 206. Here pl. 52, 2].

3. Pompei IX 2, 18 [Dawson 16. Schefold, WP. 244].

4. Pompei V 1, 1 [Dawson 50, Schefold, WP. 97].

Numbers 3 and 4 have almost completely perished and no reproduction is known to me. Numbers 1 and 2, however, may be compared. No. 1 is the well known panel in the 'House of the Sacerdos Amandus', fully preserved and in good condition [pl. 55, 1]; of No. 2, a fragment [pl. 52, 2], there exists a drawing and a watercolor in the German Institute in Rome.

The painters of both No. 1 and No. 2 adapted not only the Polyphemus but also the Andromeda painting[23] [pl.s. 55, 2. 52, 3]. The triclinium of I 7,7 contains four pictures, three of which are mythological landscapes: the Fall of Icarus, Perseus and Andromeda, Polyphemus and Galatea. The exedra in VII 15,2 is decorated with four mythological landscapes: the Death of the Niobids, the Punishment of Circe, Perseus and Andromeda, and Polyphemus and Galatea. In neither case, however, do Polyphemus and Andromeda face each other as they did in Boscotrecase.

The two Polyphemus and the two Andromeda panels are imitations, but they are not copies of their models. The adaptations made by the painter of VII 15, 2 are [p. 48] now too fragmentary to allow for a comparison that would reveal many significant differences [pl. 52, 2.3]. We may note the changed position of the ketos and the difference in scale: Galatea is very small. The setting is simplified and seems vaster, Perseus' arrival has lost much of its impact because he appears actually lower and much smaller than Andromeda. Such alterations are due to the proportions of the panels. They must have been different from those of the Boscotrecase panels. The widths of the panels are m. 1.62, the height is not preserved, but it must have been considerably less than the m. 2.40, which a correspondence to the Boscotrecase proportions would demand. Also the color scheme seems to have been very different indeed. According to the watercolor of the Polyphemus fragment, the sea is light bluish or greenish grey, the shore and Galatea are golden yellow. None of the landscapes in the exedra is of outstanding quality, but the execution of those details which still can be examined, for instance Perseus and the head of the monster, shows a certain authority, skill, and freshness.

Much better and more interesting are the adaptations in the 'House of the Sacerdos Amandus' [17,7; pl. 55, 1.2]. They share with their models the proportions of the panels, though the panels are of considerably smaller actual size[24], the bluish green color of the background, and the general structure of the composition. They differ in the scales of persons and objects in proportion to the size of the panel and also in number of significant details. Some of these differences may be briefly noted. In the Polyphemus panels they are: the postures of Polyphemus and Galatea, column and statue in the right foreground, relation between tree and central column, shape and top of column and crag, architecture in the left background. The adaptation leaves out entirely the second figure of Polyphemus, the mountain screen on the left and the background mountains. Odysseus' ship does not depart but arrives from the left barely hidden behind the crag. Differences in the Andromeda panels occur in the turn of Andromeda's body, in place and direction of Cassiopeia, in the size and form of the background scene to the right. The adaptation has no background buildings to the left, but it adds two trees. The character of these alterations and the reason for them are obvious. They all dramatize setting and theme, each detail serves to make the place, the persons, the objects more pointed, more telling, more impressive. So does the larger scale of the persons[25] and no less the execution in sharp opposites of light and dark and of contrasting strong colors [see the color plate of the Andromeda painting: Maiuri, Le Pitture delle Case di 'M. Fabius Amandio' etc. pl. B]. Note for instance the relations both in form and content that exist between Galatea, Polyphemus and the statue in the right foreground, and compare them with their models: in the change from a small Fortuna on a short column to an ithyphallic Priapus on a tall column turned towards Polyphemus, may be found the [p. 49] essential difference between the Boscotrecase painter and his follower. In the desire for dramatization the latter made a major change that may be called ingenious: he made Odysseus arrive rather than depart and, consequently, did not include a stone-throwing Polyphemus. By actually integrating the two stories he changed the entire meaning of his panel. What had been a timeless apparition in a fairyland has become the pivotal scene in an emotionally charged tale.

The alterations in the Andromeda panel are of the same nature though less obvious: note the triangle Perseus, Adromeda, ketos and the position and gesture of Cassiopeia. The change in scale connects principal and background scenes so closely that the picture must indeed be read as continuous narrative. Perseus and Andromeda and Perseus's reception are at the same level of the panel; they form a horizontal counterbalance to the axis determined by the crag. The result of the changes is less successful here than it is in the Polyphemus panel; it has something of an operatic tableau, which summarizes the actions of the show.

These two adaptations are no longer meaningful counterparts; seeing them together would not enrich the understanding of either. There was then no need to make them face each other; in fact, Polyphemus is opposite a figural composition of Heracles in the Garden of the Hesperides, Andromeda opposite the Fall of Icarus. This combination does not seem accidental. Both the Andromeda and the Icarus panels are representations in the form of a continuous narrative, one happy, the other tragic[26].

It is worth noticing that the formal means of the Boscotrecase panels could be adapted and successfully used for such different artistic ends. The adaptations in the 'House of the Sacerdos Amandus' are perhaps the most easily recognizable examples of the vast range of potentialities inherent in the pattern set by the Boscotrecase painter, but they are no exceptions. Indeed the greater part of the preserved mythological paintings testify, in one way or another, to the power of his achievements. His way of using perspective, of suggesting depth, of depicting places, objects, and actions as freely floating or suspended in space opened up the road not only to suggestive visions in bucolic landscape paintings but also to the representation of continuous narrative within one panel in mythological landscapes. Neither had existed before. What kind of mythological landscape painting did exist before may be seen in the example of the Odyssey Frieze. It is the opposite in every way: natural perspective and scale, representation of measurable depth, coherence and simplicity are the characteristics of this frieze, which can be shown to be a copy or a Hellenistic frieze.[27] The tradition of this earlier Greek way of landscape painting can still be found in some mythological landscapes on walls of the Third and Fourth Styles. Indeed there are Polyphemus and Andromeda pictures that, at least in my opinion belong to the older Hellenistic tradition.[28] Are they themselves perhaps adaptations of a Hellenistic original just as the paintings in the 'House of the Sacerdos Amandus' are adaptations of the Boscotrecase murals? Even if they are, i.e., even if there did exist two Hellenistic landscape paintings representing Polyphemus and Galatea and Perseus and Andoromeda, the Boscotrecase painter owes to them nothing of any significance. So much seems to be demonstrable beyond doubt and this is, in the present context, the only relevant consideration.[29]